Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Emir Kusturica | Sjećaš li se Doli Bel? (Do You Remember Dolly Bell?)

Emir
Kusturica’s first film, Do You Remember
Dolly Bell?, primarily takes place in a Sarajevo cultural club and in the
poor home of its central character, Dino (Slavko Štimac), a teenager with many
of the concerns of teenage boys everywhere (talking about girls, covertly
smoking, watching movies, and bragging) and a special interest in what he
perceives as acts of magic, particularly hypnosis, which he believes will help
him to take hold of a life over which he has little control.

His father (Slobodan Aligrudić), who dreams of
universal Communism, attends Marxist meetings, returning home drunk to hold
late-night family assemblies where each of his four children are asked to admit
(a bit like Roman Catholic confession) his daily sins, as Dino’s younger
brother, takes notes. Misquoting and clearly misinterpreting Marx, the elder
criticizes Dino’s obsession with hypnosis and his fascination with the Italian
movies shown at the club.

Dino, meanwhile, is basically a good boy
who, in his romantic infatuations—particularly with the movie-star stripper,
Dolly Bell—does not separate film and fiction from life, hanging out with
equally confused boys and making friends with a local pimp. Since school is
closed for the summer, the boys have little else to do.

But the adults in this tale are little
more than children themselves. At a luncheon at his uncle and aunts house, his
father and uncle argue over politics, while the boys, Dino and his older
brother, wrestle in the background. The picnic ends suddenly as the youngest
son accidently overtips the table with a bicycle and the rain, which these
figures proclaim is always on the Sarajevo horizon, sends them inside. Only the
father stubbornly remains, as if reminding himself of his everyday fate. Soon
after, his discovers he is dying from lung cancer, and near the end of this
film, dies. When the women, in Muslim tradition move his body from the bed to
the floor, posting his head in the direction of Mecca, the uncle orders him to
be returned to the bed: “He was a Communist!” he shouts!

Indeed, although the characters of the
world live, at times, rich and warm lives, they also are all thwarted through
poverty and Bosnian-Serbian life. The newspapers are filled with
disinformation, and absurdly unsound environmental proclamations which argue
for a purposeful melting of the polar caps and a complete elimination of the
Indian Ocean, resulting, they argue, in an eternally “fresh summer.” Is it any
wonder that Dino repeats, again and again, his magic phrase “Every day, in
every way I’m getting better and better,” as if in its repetition his life
might be suddenly improved?

Two things happen, however, in this
summer of 1960 that truly do change his life, transforming it into something close
to art. The authorities at the cultural club become determined to create a
band, buying instruments and attempting to engage the help of Dino and his
friends, while Dino’s pimp “friend,” asks him to hide a prostitute (Ljiljana
Blagojević, whom, after the Italian film, the pimp has named Dolly Bell) in
their barn.

The band takes shape slowly, while the
relationship between Dino and the young woman develops quite quickly, as the
knowledgeable beauty encourages the young boy’s attentions. After some tame
rough-housing—both poor pitchers of water over one another’s head, symbolizing,
presumably, a kind of baptism and purification—begin to engage in sex, only to
have the pimp return, punishing his “property” by forcing all of Dino’s friends
to have sex with her as well, again (like his father) leaving Dino alone out in
the rain with tears pouring from his eyes. Later, Dino, dressing in a bright,
white suit coat, takes in Dolly’s show, paying the fee for a true sexual
encounter with her. Again the pimp returns, but this time Dino fights back,
losing the battle, of course, but proud of his bruises, having now something
truly to brag about.

By film’s end, the band has finally taken
shape, singing one the only songs they know, Adriano Celentano's "24 Mila
Baci,” the large audience dancing in the cultural club. Love and art have
finally won out over the bleak daily blows of Communist life.

Yes, there is something predictable and
sentimental at times about Kusturica’s wry film, but through its many images of
the family just eating, sleeping, smoking, and arguing, Do You Remember Dolly Bell? fondlycalls up a richly treasured past in a city that would later become
a vicious killing ground.